The field of this invention is that of connectors used in mounting multi-terminal integrated circuit units on printed circuit boards and the invention relates more particularly to a low cost connector adapted for applications requiring high reliability.
Connectors for mounting multi-terminal integrated circuit units on printed circuit boards conventionally have contact members mounted in openings in a molded electrically insulating body. The contact members have a post extending from one side of the body to be connected in an electrical circuit and has spring means on the opposite end of each contact member to resiliently grip integrated circuit terminals inserted into the body openings. When such connectors are intended for military applications and the like requiring particularly high performance reliability, the contact members are typically formed in two parts. One part comprises a post formed by screw machine from a brass rod or the like and has an axial bore in one end of the post. A spring clip formed of conductive spring material is then pressed into the bore and is adapted to resiliently engage an i.c. terminal inserted into the bore. Two part contact members of this type are mounted in individual body openings and provide high performance but the contact members are relatively expensive to manufacture and are particularly expensive to assemble with the connector bodies. Further, the spring clips inserted into the contact members typically comprise a ring of spring material having pairs of springs leaves depending from the rings to make resilient engagement with i.c. terminals inserted into the rings. Such rings usually have an interruption in the ring and that interruption as well as the spring leaves usually have random locations in the post bores so the connectors are frequently limited to use with round i.c. terminals or the like. It would be desirable if such high performance connectors could be manufactured and assembled at lower cost and could be adapted for use with strip type i.c. terminals for providing a high reliability performance in many other potential applications.